“I entreated you not to come to-night. Oh, my Giovanni! And you promised. Oh! Why—why did you come, Giovanni?”
It was her sister’s voice. It broke on a heartrending sob. And the voice of the resourceful Capataz de Cargadores, master and slave of the San Tome treasure, who had been caught unawares by old Giorgio while stealing across the open towards the ravine to get some more silver, answered careless and cool, but sounding startlingly weak from the ground.
“It seemed as though I could not live through the night without seeing thee once more—my star, my little flower.”
The brilliant tertulia was just over, the last guests had departed, and the Senor Administrador had gone to his room already, when Dr. Monygham, who had been expected in the evening but had not turned up, arrived driving along the wood-block pavement under the electric-lamps of the deserted Calle de la Constitucion, and found the great gateway of the Casa still open.
He limped in, stumped up the stairs, and found the fat and sleek Basilio on the point of turning off the lights in the sala. The prosperous majordomo remained open-mouthed at this late invasion.
“Don’t put out the lights,” commanded the doctor. “I want to see the senora.”
“The senora is in the Senor Adminstrador’s cancillaria,” said Basilio, in an unctuous voice. “The Senor Administrador starts for the mountain in an hour. There is some trouble with the workmen to be feared, it appears. A shameless people without reason and decency. And idle, senor. Idle.”
“You are shamelessly lazy and imbecile yourself,” said the doctor, with that faculty for exasperation which made him so generally beloved. “Don’t put the lights out.”
Basilio retired with dignity. Dr. Monygham, waiting in the brilliantly lighted sala, heard presently a door close at the further end of the house. A jingle of spurs died out. The Senor Administrador was off to the mountain.